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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29681139">TLV-ATL</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawlessassholes/pseuds/flawlessassholes'>flawlessassholes</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Immortality in Atlanta [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Black Sails</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Immortality, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Character Death, Background Relationships, Background character death related to HIV/AIDS, Character Study, F/M, Jewish Character, Jewish John Silver, Judaism, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Mentions of Infertility, Mentions of miscarriage, Period-Typical Homophobia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:06:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,318</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29681139</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawlessassholes/pseuds/flawlessassholes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It's a long flight back to Atlanta. Silver thinks, and he mourns. He's done a lot of that over the last couple hundred of years.</i>
</p><p>
Prequel to Ponce de Leon Ave (the modern bits).</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver, John Silver/OFC, John Silver/OMC, Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton/John Silver</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Immortality in Atlanta [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2181072</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>TLV-ATL</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I watched the Old Guard and had feelings about immortality. So here's a little prequel to Ponce. You should probably read that first, it's not too long.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Silver hates flying El Al. It makes him feel like a bad Jew. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They took off from Ben Gurion just as the sun was setting, and now flight attendants were passing out meals. It's kosher, which Silver doesn't mind, but he always thinks that kosher food tastes a bit worse 40,000 feet above the ground. But then again, he's pretty bad at keeping kosher. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tries to abstain from pork, but he loves lobster, and he doesn't give a shit about what wines he can drink except on the holidays. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It's a long flight back to Atlanta. Silver thinks, and he mourns. He's done a lot of that over the last couple hundred of years. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tel Aviv to Atlanta. Only fourteen hours. The flight from Melbourne to Tel Aviv was worse— nearly eighteen. At least he had Alice's mum keeping him company, but he left her with her sister in Eliat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice wanted her ashes scattered in the Red Sea. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She loved scuba diving— that's how they met. They were in the same diving group, swimming through the Great Barrier Reef. Alice wouldn't stop throwing up on the boat ride back to shore, and Silver took her to the hospital, even though they just met. He was there when they found out she had breast cancer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice never stopped loving the sea. They went to Eliat for their honeymoon. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He should take the ring off. He knows. Slip it onto his necklace. He'll wear it there for a few years, maybe a decade, until he meets someone else. Then it'll go in the velvet box he carries with him, the one with dozens of wedding rings of people he's loved and lost. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two of them are nearly four hundred years old. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He offered the rings to Flint when Thomas and Miranda died. He didn't want them. Those first few years— the fifty or so directly after they lost them— Flint was in so much </span>
  <em>
    <span>pain. </span>
  </em>
  <span>It was hard enough for Silver to lose Miranda and Thomas once— he couldn't imagine Flint going through it </span>
  <em>
    <span>twice. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Flint would have lost his mind on a flight this long, Sliver mused. He hated flying. It was the one invention of their immortality that Flint never got used to— flight. When he traveled— which wasn't much, anymore, unless Flint had a serious change of heart in the twenty years that Silver's been away— he always preferred horse or train, and of course, ship. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though, Silver thinks, they do have that garage of classic cars outside of Genoa. Maybe they should go back there— if Silver could convince Flint to get on a plane. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hasn't been very good at convincing Flint of anything lately. (If one considered the last 45 years to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>lately.</span>
  </em>
  <span>)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After Joshua died in 1993, Silver needed to get out of the United States. San Francisco felt like a ghost town, with too many of his friends dead. He was furious that Joshua died in a hospital, his skin covered in Kaposi sarcoma, without his parents because they hated him for who he loved. He hated the United States, their shitty response to the epidemic, their failing healthcare system, Regan and Bush and Clinton, who all had blood on their hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wore Josh's ring on his necklace until he married Alice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tried to convince Flint to travel with him— Silver wanted to see Vietnam and Thailand and Singapore, with a mind to go on to New Zealand and Australia for a while. Flint said he saw enough of Southeast Asia in the war, which was his excuse for everything, and then they fought like they always did, and Silver left. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He remembered the day Alice got her PET scan back, that she was really in remission after the double mastectomy and experimental trials. She wanted children, and Silver had to tell her, then, about his immortality. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She just looked at him with those sea-green eyes that reminded him so much of Flint and said, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oh, Yoni. I knew there was something eternal about your soul. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Cancer came back too quickly and with a vengeance. Silver thought that maybe, finally, he could be a father. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He missed Alice so fucking much. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once, in those blissful five years before Thomas and Miranda fell ill, they talked about children. In all those years, Miranda wanted children. She confided in Silver that she thought Thomas may be infertile. She wasn't, she knew, because she miscarried once, a few years into their time on Nassau. She never told Flint— or Thomas, for that matter— but she trusted Silver with that knowledge. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wanted his child— or Flints, she didn't care— and they would raise it together, the four of them, in their little cottage surrounded by the river and the sea. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That plan went to hell, too. So many of Silver's did. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knew Flint was in Georgia again, for the first time since they left it. Not in Savannah, though, in Atlanta. Silver conducted his research, as he always did. He was living in a highrise apartment on Ponce de Leon Avenue. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could've just called Flint, he supposed. Asked for his address. But where was the fun in that? It was a game of theirs— how he could find Flint, how Flint could find him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He's been gone for too long this time. Twenty years. It's longer than he's ever been gone before. They used to fall apart and back together for a few years, but no more than two or three. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What if Flint didn't want to see him? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wondered if Alice's mum would get back to Melbourne okay. He should have escorted her back instead of leaving directly from Tel Aviv. But she insisted he go. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Go, find yourself, Yoni. Alice would have wanted you to see the world. She would have wanted you to find love again.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Ima, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he protested. There was so much she didn't know. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cabin lights dimmed, and Silver fell into an uneasy sleep. When he woke, the sun was rising, and he peeked out the window. He flew into Atlanta quite a bit in his life, even if Flint hadn't. He always liked seeing the snaking, congested traffic of I-75 and I-85 and their convergence. Then, the plane touched down at Hartsfield-Jackson. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Fly Delta Jets,</span>
  </em>
  <span> the sign welcomed him. He wished. He hated flying El Al. He hated being surrounded by observant Jews, wrapped in their tallit and tefillin as they prayed in the morning, the attendants shuffling around him to serve kosher breakfast. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn't hate it, not really. He only wished he could do better. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He presented his Australian passport to Border Control— </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jonathan Cohen,</span>
  </em>
  <span> it read. He took Alice's last name. It said he was 33 and born in Adelaide. What a joke. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was waved through. He picked up the ratty duffle that had been with him since the 80s. He gave most of his and Alice's things to her siblings or charity. Silver didn't have much in this extended life of his— and what he did have, he usually left with Flint. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He freshened up in the bathroom at the airport, changing his shirt, brushing his teeth, washing his face— trying to feel more human. It was hard. And a mistake— Georgia's humidity blasted him as soon as he stepped on the MARTA platform, like a very unwelcome memory. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Silver forgot that Atlanta's public transit was a joke. Still, it was a short walk from the North Ave MARTA station to Flint's apartment. He rode the elevator. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was always nervous before seeing Flint again. He could never figure out why. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Third door on the left, the 18th floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A knock. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Hello, John," Flint said. He looked unchanged. He knew they both did. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(That was the problem.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He flashed that damn smile of his, the one that Flint said he loved and feared. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Captain."  </span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sorry El Al. I still love you. Also, there aren't direct flights to any of these places from any of these places, but whatever. Watch the Old Guard, <a href="www.flawlessassholes.tumblr.com">follow me on Tumblr,</a> I love you.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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